A contaminated water supply is a very serious issue which can result in a serious health hazard, especially in children and the elderly. If you suspect that this has happened, then you need to contact the supplying company for your area. Battersea Plumbers can recognise contamination in pipework.The most common way for contamination to occur in a home is for something known as ‘back flow’ to happen.What is back flow? Normally the cold water supply flowing into your house is under a large amount of pressure. This means that to fill your bath etc. doesn’t take forever. Also the watering of your garden is done in good time. This pressure more importantly will ensure that the water flows away from you in the right direction, in your bath and onto your garden. Nothing can contaminate the mains cold-water pipework because little or nothing can get into it, but what happens if the pressure was suddenly to drop? Lets say that a major pipe had been ruptured a round two miles away from your home. This results in no water for you. You are in the garden so you put the hose down and go and investigate, looking for a big kink in the hose. While you are doing this, the water in your garden suddenly finds itself being sucked back into the now empty hose, and eventually, back into the mains cold water supply. The water now is, potentially mixed every foreign object and body that your imagination can conjure up. The loss of pressure is someone else’s fault, however now you are responsible for the contamination. (I know, cruel eh!) To make sure that this does not occur, the water regulations insist that you fit devices for preventing ‘back flow’. A Battersea Plumber fits different valves. In hose for the garden, you should have what is called a ‘double check’ valve on the outside tap. A simple device that will only ever allow the water to flow one way. If it is fitted and you lose pressure, it doesn’t matter because your tap will not let water flow back into the main supply contaminating it.
